Kandiah Anandanadesan

Kandiah Anandanadesan (1961 –16 April 2020) was a Sri Lankan-British mridangam teacher and mridangam artiste with a Carnatic music background. He also taught the craft and art of practicing mridangam to students and he was affectionately called as Anandan master by his students. He migrated to UK in early 1980s.

Biography

Kandiah was born in 1961 in the Northern Province of Sri Lanka at Thellipalai, Jaffna. He attended Union College and Mahajana college. He learnt the essence of playing mridangam under the guidance and mentorship of his Guru K P Sinnarajah. His father served as a teacher at Union College, while his mother too was a school teacher having worked at the Mahajana College.

Career

Kandiah is indeed considered by many as one of the prominent Eelam-born artistes and teachers from the influential golden generation which gave tremendous importance and a sense of identity with a touch of uniqueness to literary and artistic work in medieval Eelam. Just like his contemporaries, he also jumped on the bandwagon by deciding to migrate for the western countries in order to pursue greener pastures with the intention of seeking better career prospects. He eventually was the fulcrum of passing the baton to younger generation in terms of sharing the traditional fine arts and Tamil language education to Tamil diaspora population in such countries and it led to the foundation of musical institute ‘Ananthalayas’, based in Harrow in North London. It was the major stepping stone as far as his ambitious efforts were concerned to transfer the cultural traditions to aspiring youngsters, while his life became full circle with his solid attitude and temperament after reaping benefits through redemption arc with leaps and bounds before managing to cement his reputation as a most sought-after miruthangam teacher following his move to London during the late 1980's. Many of his students have gone onto make names for themselves as mridangam artistes and as mridangam teachers. In addition to mridangam, he also taught other prominent traditional Carnatic percussion instruments including ghatam, kanjira, morsing and thavil for his students.

Death

He died on 16 April 2020 at the age of 58 in London due to COVID-19 pandemic.